Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire (1301-1922) was a Muslim Turkish empire that was founded by Osman in the city of Bursa in present-day Turkey after taking over the land from the Byzantine Empire with his band of mercenaries. Eventually the Ottomans would unite the Turkish warlords of Asia Minor and conquer the Byzantines and found an empire that encompassed most of North Africa, the Middle East, The Balkans, and parts of Central Asia. It was destroyed in the aftermath of the Turkish War of Independence in 1922.

Osman's Empire
The battle of Bapheus, fought just 50 kilometers to the east of Constantinople in 1301, marks the first recorded mention of the Ottomans in world history. Led by a man called Osman, this modest army of Turks won a stunning victory over their Byzantine opponents, routing them from the battlefield and driving them north to the edge of the sea of Marmara. The defeat shocked the complacent Byzantines, who had already been struggling for decades to maintain a grip on the region.

Over the next 150 years the strength and size of the Ottoman Empire grew, practically unhindered. Winning victory after victory, the Ottoman Sultans slowly but surely engulfed regions once controlled by the mighty Byzantine Empire - first in Anatolia (now modern Turkey), then in Thrace (present day Hungary, Greece, Macedonia, Albania, etc.). Over time, the Ottomans' increasing presence in Eastern Europe began to worry the West, and most especially irked the Vatican, whose hatred of the Eastern Orthodox church now seemed a mere quarrel over semantics in the light of the encroaching Islamic Empire. But when push came to shove, even the Pope could not be bothered to send aid to the ailing Byzantine Emperor, whose Empire, by the middle of the fifteenth century, contained only the capital, Constantinople, and its surrounding villages.

From Constantinople to Konstantiniyye
Then, at last, in 1453 - after fifty-four days of fighting - Constantinople fell to the Ottomans too. Led by their Sultan, 21 year old Mehmet II, the Janissaries poured through a breach in the wall into the city. Upon entering the city center, the victorious Sultan headed straight for renowned Hagia Sophia. Reaching the ancient cathedral, he fell to the ground and sprinkled some raw earth over his turban as a sign of respect.

Eager to relocate the capital to the shores of the Bosphorus, Mehmet's first order of business was to rebuilt Constantinople - now rendered as Konstantiniyye in Turkish, and colloquially called Istanbul by many of its residents - as a model city of a cosmopolitan Empire. In the decade after conquest, he was careful to preserve what he could of the old Byzantine capital while imbuing everything with a modern Ottoman meaning. In this, Sultan Mehmet must be considered a success, for in little more than a few decades the population exploded from a paltry 40,000 citizens to well over 100,000 Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Romani. People flocked to the city from East and West, drawn to a capital bursting with commercial life, in the heart of an Empire that valued religious and cultural diversity not only by tradition but by rule of law.

Internal Issues
The Ottoman Empire grew in strength in campaigns against Vlad the Impaler in Wallachia in the late 1400s and early 1500s, under the leadership of Sultan Bayezid II. However, the earthquake of 1506 caused immense damage to the prestiege of the empire, and Bayezid II was idle, showing the decline of the young nation. In 1511-1512 the empire was plagued by conspiracy and revolt, with the Janissaries of Shahkulu rebelling in Cappadocia, and Byzantine heir Manuel Palaiologos rising up with a Byzantine restoration movement. However, Prince Selim crushed these rebels, as well as his father and brother Shehzade Ahmet, and took over the title of Sultan by force in 1512. Under his rule the empire extended its control to Egypt and more of the Middle East, and his son Suleiman the Magnificent would lay the groundwork for the rise of the empire.

Suleiman the Magnificent
From 1520 to 1566, Suleiman campaigned in the Balkans and Mediterranean against the Holy League assembled by Western Europe in response to his endless string of victories. He completed dominance over Hungary with a victory at the 1526 Battle of Mohacs and although a siege of Vienna failed a year later, he continued to fight the Austrians and their allies and expand the empire's borders. However, in 1565 he failed to capture Malta, which led to the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and six years later his successors lost the Battle of Lepanto to a large fleet of Western European ships from across the Christian world.

The Ottoman Empire was on the wrong foot at the turn of the 17th century. Although they could brag about sheer numbers in battles and large borders on the world map, they were rotting on the inside. Corruption within the royal family and government and abusive treatment of the poor by the Janissaries led to revolts in Constantinople. Eventually, the Ottomans again threw their forces across their borders and into the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland, and they were defeated by their combined forces in the 1683 Siege of Vienna. In 1697 they were again defeated in the disastrous Battle of Zenta, and in 1699 made peace with Austria, giving them Hungary.

From Zenith to Decline
In 1700, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of The Balkans, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Near East, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, with the Barbary States protectorates controlling North Africa and the Crimean Khanate controlling the only Russian Black Sea ports. Under the rule of Mustafa II Turkey modernized and drove the Persians out of Esfahan in 1701, recaptured Morea from Venice in 1702, and fought and defeated Russia in the 1708 Pruth Campaign. They were on the rise until their Swedish allies were defeated, and they lost Belgrade to the Austrians in 1717 in a fresh war.

From the 18th century to the mid-19th century the Ottoman Empire continually lost its lands. The Balkans fell to Austria in the 1780s and in the 1790s they were also encroached upon by the Russians in Moldavia, and in the 1820s Greece became an independent nation. Turkey's existence was only saved by the British and French during the Crimean War of the 1850s, in which the Allied forces prevented the Russians from taking the Ottoman Balkans. But by 1914 all of The Balkans were either independent or in Austrian and Russian hands. Even Cyprus, which they had taken over in 1570, was now British.

Fall of the Ottoman Empire
World War I was the war that divided empires into many nations, and it was the war that finally ruined the Ottoman legacy. Allying with the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans fought the French and British in the Middle East and the Russians in the Caucasus. The Russians liberated Georgia and Armenia from Ottoman rule and the Arabs of the Near East declared independence, and the Arab Revolt lasted until 1919, a year after the four-year war ended. At the end of World War I, Turkey was under occupation by Greek and other Allied forces, and the Sultan had no power. In 1919 a republican movement under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk overthrew the Greek occupation and also ousted the Sultan, and Turkey became a republic.